


Cast Me Down to the Seabed and See What Bites

by 4eeldrive



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestor-Era, Ancestors, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mind Control, Sexual Assault, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:23:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4456481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4eeldrive/pseuds/4eeldrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aranea is a liar and Porrim is a fighter. Saints only die quietly in the sanitized version.</p><p>Or:</p><p>The Dolorosa struggles and strains, mouth full of salt, trying to survive against the highbloods, and the vast treacherous expanse of the ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [confiscatedretina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/confiscatedretina/gifts).



Her world had gone too bright, fire burning always in her eyesight. No matter how much she blinked, how many tears she shed, she could not clear the ghost image of the burning shackles from the back of her eyes. The image seemed to be imprinted there permanently, eating away at her vision. Too much light.

They had led her away to the auction block, and the shackles they placed on her wrists had not burned. She had seen her son’s flesh crack and bubble from the heat of his. Hers did not. The irons were too tight, but not bright enough, so she wrenched her arms against them until they cut into her skin. The jade of her own blood did not burn bright enough either.

Standing at the auction block, she had trouble hearing. There was a great, everywhere noise in her ears, but she could not discern the words being said; not those of the crowd, or the ones that tumbled quickly from the lips of the cerulean auctioneer. Even the cries from the low bloods crowded around her on the block were muted, though she could see from their open mouths that many of them were howling.

Her deafness continued through her own purchasing; she barely registered the sea troll with the twin scars across his face in the crowd. She did register his cold hands as they trailed across the muscles of her arms, an invading finger in her mouth as he checked her teeth. It wasn’t worth it to bite.

The moons reflected too brightly off the water as she and the other purchases were herded aboard the ship. Their glare was all she could focus on as she was shoved into the hold, toward the captain’s slave pens.

The pens did not even offer the small mercy of darkness. As soon as the slaves had all been loaded in, the pirates lit a series of lanterns before leaving the hold. Nowhere near as bright as the sun, not even a tenth of it, the lanterns still burned with an unholy brightness, some noxious chemical concoction that burned the nostrils as well as the eyes. It kept the slaves from doing much but curling in on themselves, trying to cover their faces. The corners were where most tried to congregate. Though she was loathe to leave herself open in the center of the floor, The Dolorosa curled there anyway, laying on her side and attempting to scrape out a small amount of solitude for herself.

A fight broke out in the far left corner, and a diminutive copper blood was ejected from the mass of bodies, sporting a broken nose. They crept closer to where The Dolorosa lay, pausing to watch her reaction. She watched them back, half her head covered with her arms, peering out at them from between her elbows.  The copper blood was trembling, and looked so young. The Dolorosa churred quietly at them , letting them know it was all right. They would likely find no mercy from anyone else. Slowly, they lay down next to her, but not touching her. They had seen her fangs, kind as she was.

Eventually the holding cells quieted down. Most seemed to have resigned themselves to their fate. Those who hadn’t, the ones screaming or banging at the bars had been forcefully quieted by their peers, who feared group punishment.

The copper blood next to her had fallen asleep, or lost consciousness, and lay there shivering. The heaving of the ship was threatening to make The Dolorosa vomit, but she feared the others would turn on her if she made their shared quarters any more unbearable. She rolled onto her stomach, face turned towards her shivering companion.

She couldn’t remember having fallen asleep, and wasn’t sure if she slept at all the remainder of that lunar cycle. The slaves were brought up in small bunches, made to work about the ship. The Dolorosa ached, even into her chitin. Her knees bled from kneeling on the deck to scrub it, and her knuckles were bruised and scabbed over from scrabbling against the wood and rope of the ship. The lashings broke through her back plates to the tender flesh they hid, whips tipped with cruel metal barbs for just that purpose.

After that first time in the hold, the slaves were never all together again. The copper blood stayed as close to The Dolorosa as they dared when the two of them were together. They never spoke; The Dolorosa couldn't muster the energy to remember how to speak.

After a full lunar click had passed, both moons full and heavy overhead, all the slaves were crowded above deck, corralled in by the crew. The Dolorosa wanted to stay in the back of the crowd, as they gathered before the mast, but she was pushed out towards the middle.

The Captain with his twin scars stood before them, flanked on either side by the biggest of his crew. At his feet there lay the body of a blue blood, rigid and contorted.

“I do not believe I am a cruel man,” Dualscar boomed out across the deck. “But a cruelty was attempted against me, and now I must repay it.” He waited, a dramatic pause, before his next words came out in a low hiss. “Which one of you land dwelling maggots tried to poison me?”

The crowd began to squirm and murmur, sensing the violence that was sure to come.

Dualscar paused, sniffed theatrically, and then continued once more. “Now luckily for me, I have a designated taste tester. Not so luckily for him,” Dualscar motioned down at the body on deck, “or for you.” Someone in the crowd began to sob. The Dolorosa tried not to look at anything.

“Of course, if I could only properly punish the responsible parties, we could all move on from this whole affair.”

The crowd erupted into a frenzy, people pushing one another and howling. A few tried to keep everyone else calm, but it was no use. Dualscar watched the whole scene impassively, waiting.

The copper blood who'd lain next to The Dolorosa that first day was shoved forwards. They cowered, head dipped low towards the ground, hands up in a futile plea for mercy. The captain hefted his gun, and for a moment The Dolorosa feared he would shoot the poor troll dead right there. Instead he swung the heavy butt of it upwards, the spiked metal gauging hard into the copper blood’s face. Blood sprayed across the deck, and The Orphaner’s shoes. The slave hit the wood with a wet sound, one hand twisting sharply as they landed, their wrist breaking. They clutched at their shattered and bloody jaw with there other hand, squealing in pain. The Orphaner was glaring down at the coppery stain on his boots.

“Filthy.” The Dolorosa just managed to hear him mutter in disgust, before he kicked out at the slave’s head. They collapsed even lower onto the deck, and The Orphaner kicked at them further, eventually stomping on them as they lay prone on the deck. The slave had screamed and howled at first, but they had gone quiet. The Dolorosa didn’t notice, because sound had receded from her again, and her eyes stung from how unbearably bright everything suddenly was.

She pushed through the crowd of assembled slaves, legs shaking. It felt like she was going slow, too slowly, The Orphaner had brought his heavy boots down so many times already. But the pirate crew didn’t have enough time to react before she was on the Captain, a few managing to get out a warning shout just as her fist connected with his face. Dualscar was knocked back, his gun falling from his hands and skittering across the deck.

The Dolorosa’s blows were uncoordinated; her palms had opened after the first punch. She clawed at his face and neck, at the raised scars that were his namesake. She caught one of his earfins, and nearly ripped it off his face before his crew managed to intercede. She could feel the chill of their bodies as blue-hued crew members piled on her, trying to pull her away. If only she could get at his throat with her teeth. Someone had grabbed ahold of her horns, pulling her head back and away from the Captain’s neck. She had almost felt his pulse against her fangs, she was so close.

“Put her in the hold! Put her in the hold away from the others until I deal with her!” The Captain howled, clutching at his face. A teal blood had recovered his gun for him, and earned a blow to the head from Dulascar as he snatched it back. The mass of arms pulled The Dolorosa along, back towards the hold and its shuddering floor. At least she’d be alone. Maybe all the pulling would separate her limbs, and she’d be free.

The copper blood’s body was thrown over the side. The Dolorosa heard the splash they made as they hit the waves. She hoped the water didn’t burn them.

  
\----

The Orphaner was being even more insufferable than usual. Chuffing his way around her ship, all puffed up and smug about his newest purchase. Incessantly boasting about how lovely she was, how beautiful and intact her fangs were, sly remarks about the cleverness of the tongue that those fangs hid, praising the curve and near perfection of her horns. Likely all lies. Really, The Marquise thought, all it did was speak ill of his exploits, that his most beloved possession was some lowblooded slave purchased (Purchased! Not even stolen!) at auction. The Marquise had piles and piles of treasure to crow about, all illegitimately gained, and she wasn’t anywhere near as insufferable as he was.

She snorted, locating The Orphaner’s ship on the horizon in her spyglass. Well, maybe it was her turn to be smug. And it was always nice to bring her kismesis down a notch. Much as she’d love to lay into his ship with hers, cannonballs firing and waters churning, finesse always proved the more humiliating route.

Setting out in the sole lifeboat, she rowed across the empty expanse of ocean. No self respecting captain would actually outfit their ship with lifeboats - such an action would preemptively admit a future failure. But in a crisis, of course the Captain should have options. And it was handy for stealth runs against a stuffy kismesis.

The sun still hadn’t set completely; a small sliver still glowed dangerously over the horizon, enough to hurt but not enough to blind so long as she kept her back to it. She doubted that the lone, sleep-deprived lookout would even be awake, or risk turning their face towards the sun, even with their protective-wear on. They were likely asleep at their post anyway; The Orphaner’s crew could be replaced with the barnacles growing on his ship’s hull, and he’d likely have a better-run outfit.

True to habit, the deck of the ship was abandoned. Hunched as she was against the remaining glare of the sun, shielding her eyes as much as she could, the Marquise could still tell that the lookout was napping, part of the sail pulled across their entire body to ward off the light.

Raids against Dualscar were too easy; she almost wasn’t sure why he even had a reputation to speak of. Certainly, he was nowhere near her level of talent, when it came down to it.

Below decks all was quiet, and the Marquise met no one; no boatswain, oarsmen, or cabin boys. The whole way down to the cargo hold was abandoned. She ought to have brought along some explosives, just to compound the lesson she was going to teach her behated kismesis. Steal his prize and ruin his ship. She supposed that just the theft would have to be enough.

The precious slave was slumped in a corner of the cell, a mess of rags and angular limbs barely discernible as a person. It was empty save for her. The Orphaner had likely stooped to purchasing at auction because he had run through the rest of his supply. His few remaining slaves were undoubtedly in use elsewhere aboard the ship. One lone slave in the holding cells was a thoroughly pathetic feat for a pirate.

Mindfang held up her hand against the glare of the lamps. It pricked at her eyes and threatened to make them water. The slave should be docile enough, having been submitted to the lights for an untold number of hours.

As her footsteps sounded on the wooden floor, the slave’s head lolled back, allowing the two of them to make eye contact. The slave emitted a few disjointed warning clicks, low in her throat, the action revealing her fangs. Indeed, her fangs were lovely, and complimented nicely by the faintest flush of jade on her cheeks. The Marquise supposed she wouldn’t hold the method of acquisition against The Orphaner in this case any longer, given the rarity of it. Few had even laid eyes on the holy women of the breeding caverns. They were killed by Imperial guards if they tried to leave their duties. A sainted slave was a rare thing.

The Marquise easily picked the heavy lock and entered the holding pen. The jadeblood’s face was worn and lined, and discolored in places, like she had long been exposed to the damaging rays of the sun. Heavy jade circles under her eyes spoke to a life of exhaustion. Aranea reached out to stroke her cheek, slightly disappointed in the lines at her mouth and eyes. As she did, there was an almost imperceptible spasm of muscles in the jadeblood’s cheeks. Aranea had become adept at noticing it in unruly lowbloods, the urge to bite present event in a mouth filled with laughably flat teeth. Before her new prize had even managed to fully open her mouth, Aranea had already reached out with her psionics to squash that unfortunate urge in the jadeblood’s mind.

The ship pitched underneath Mindfang’s feet, but it wasn’t the sea causing the sudden vertigo. Her mind had recoiled when she reached out to squeeze the other woman’s thoughts. 

The jadeblood seemed just as surprised as she was, mouth still half open

Aranea tried again, reaching out to try and grasp at the slave’s fears and mold them to what she wanted. “Don’t worry,” she cooed, dropping her voice low and soft. “I’m here to rescue you.” It was a romantic image that bloomed in her head, one which she pushed along into the slave’s; the dashing Captain here to rescue the trembling slave from a cruel and monstrous pirate. “It will all be all right, now.”

The too-brightness in The Dolorosa’s mind dimmed a bit, at those words. She wanted it to be all right. Aranea hooked onto that thought. It would, of course, be all right, if The Dolorosa just went willingly with her.

Aranea climbed out of the ship’s hold, and crossed the deck of Dualscar’s ship to return to her lifeboat, The Dolorosa in tow. She walked slower than Aranea would have liked, her limbs reacting in jerks and spasms as Mindfang’s will settled over her own. Aranea coaxed her on as much as she dared; better not to rush things. It would make the whole affair more savory if she drew it out.

\----

Aranea reclined in her bed, relaxing. The sea was calm, for now, and she’d put enough distance between herself and Dualscar for the time being. She’d just sent for her newest acquisition to be brought to her quarters, and was carefully planning out the game they were going to play. She’d positioned herself just so, angling her head perfectly. The jadeblood’s eyes would naturally be drawn to her face, perfectly framed by the treasure stacked around her quarters, as soon as she entered the room, whether Aranea forced her to or not. The game was more fun when she used more skills than pure psychic talent, after all.

Her door creaked open, and The Dolorosa was shoved through by two crew members. The woman was clearly terrified, on the verge of screaming. Aranea mentally reached out to squash those feelings, lowering her emotional state to a moldable blank. The Dolorosa’s pupils dilated accordingly, and her breathing slowed. Much better for what Mindfang wanted.

“You like it much better here than on that other ship, don’t you?” It was always more fun to ask questions, so that she could have the jadeblood answer, like playing with a doll. The Dolorosa nodded, a small, shy smile tugging up around her fangs. “I treat you much better, don’t I?” The Dolorosa jerkily nodded again. “I don’t sully your lovely hands with menial work, or mar those handsome broad shoulders with lashings. Aren’t you lucky I rescued you?”

The Dolorosa made a strangled half-sound in response. Aranea furrowed her brows. That hadn’t been what she’d wanted at all. The jadeblood had owed her a heartfelt thanks for her rescue. Never-mind, she’d get that later. Meanwhile, she’d just have to redouble her psychic efforts to get the desired effects.

“Why don’t you come over here next to me?” Aranea smiled and pat the bed next to herself. “My quarters are so much more luxurious than that cramped room you’ve insisted on setting yourself up in.”

The Dolorosa walked over to her, her steps smooth and measured, even with the rolling of the ship. Aranea smiled wider. That was much better.

Lowering herself onto the bed, The Dolorosa sighed. She wondered why her bones were always aching, and then quickly forgot the thought. The Marquise was so kind, and would take care of her.

Mindfang reached out to caress her face. Her lips were moving but The Dolorosa couldn't find the accompanying sound. She was hearing something in her memory, the angry churring of dozens of Mother Grub wings. She’d been so young when she’d first heard that sound. Why were they upset? Where was the danger?

The wooden walls suddenly terrified her. She wasn’t in the brooding caverns anymore, and couldn’t remember how she had left them. Someone was touching her face, and when she shifted to look at them, the cerulean-blood was frowning.

The jadeblood wouldn’t have been worth so many coaxing attempts if the high angles of her face weren’t so fetching, and if giving up here wouldn’t signify some sort of defeat for Mindfang. Normally she would have just brute forced things by now, if only the prize hadn’t been so great. The jadeblood was more challenging than the lowbloods Aranea was used to controlling, or even her own crew.

Exerting too much force on a troll’s mind threatened to burn out the neurons, causing lasting damage to the nervous system, tremors, seizures, if not death. Aranea was too adept to cause a death she didn’t want with her own powers, but if the jadeblood happened to be crippled, well then, she’d just have to be even more grateful to the Marquise for caring for her. She doubled down on the psiionics.

The Dolorosa moved even closer to Aranea, wrapping her arms around her in an embrace. “Good girl,” The Marquise cooed, purring at her slave like a lover as she stroked her well-muscled arms. Implanted in The Dolorosa’s mind was the idea that she should thank her saviour, and that a kiss would be a good way to start off the rest of the thanking she would need to do. It was so gracious of The Marquise, after all, to care for a low, dead thing, like herself.

Aranea untangled herself from The Dolorosa’s arms slightly, waiting.

The wings were buzzing and they were so angry and everything was too bright.

The Dolorosa was so angry.

Why was her mouth suddenly filled with seawater? The salt was unbearable against her gums, and she tried to spit it out, but something was covering her mouth.

Aranea yelped, an embarrassingly undignified sound, and pulled away from the Dolorosa’s mouth. She could taste iron-rich jade on her tongue. Blood was spilling from the slave’s mouth in a languished, drooling cascade. Aranea rapidly moved away, sending a lightning bolt of psychic control into The Dolorosa’s mind, desperate to regain her. She wrestled away her free will and muscle control, and forced her to open her mouth. The jade blood had nearly bitten her own tongue off, the slab of muscle barely still connected. The Dolorosa sighed again, causing a great wave of blood to spill down across her own neck.

Disgusted, Mindfang forced her off the bed, making her walk herself back to her cell. It had perhaps been too easy to sneak onto The Orphaner’s ship.

The Dolorosa’s left side was spasming, and Aranea wasn’t telling it to do that.

\----

“Well, Marquise, how is that new slave of yours fairing? She treating you all right?” The Orphaner’s lips were curled in a sneer around his fangs. His boarding party had snuck up on the ship, using her own trick with the sun. She’d have to kill the day watchmen later, if any of them were still alive. He'd killed quite a few of her crew, before she'd come out to talk to him. A petty tantrum, on his part.

The Marquise returned him a bared grin of her own.

“Yes of course, dear. We’ve grown quite, ah, close as of late.” The slight flutter of her eyelashes, and the pause for a gasping breath had been expertly deployed. The Orphaner was a jealous man, and much as he tried to hide it, the Marquise saw the slight shift in his fins, the minimal flaring of his gills, and could tell that even that small hint had wounded him. Good. He never had to know how difficult the jadeblooded slave was proving to be. He never had to see the new fang mark scars in her side either.

At the thought of the slave, The Marquise sent a small probing tendril of psychic energy down to the hold, just to see how the cause of all this was doing. She did hope that eventually she could make such boasts to Dualscar without it being a lie, much as she enjoyed mis-telling the truth to him. Hopefully the slave was taking the time to think about her actions, and the beating Mindfang had given her after her last stunt.

What should have been a mild mental probe caused Mindfang’s head to reel. Her vision went blurry around the edges, and she felt the distinct tightening of the throat that had accompanied the seasickness the first time she had set foot on a ship so many years ago. She hadn’t been sick since, but this was too much.

Thankfully, she managed to bite back her nausea, but a short, barking yell did manage to escape her throat.

“What’s gotten into you?” Dualscar growled, leaping away, as if she was contagious with some infection.

Mindfang had seen as from the slave’s eyes for a few brief moments, before being forcefully ejected. The jadeblood had somehow managed to rip her shackles from the walls, and escape her cell, wrists battered and bleeding. Mindfang had watched her wrestle the cutlass from one of her crew and turn it back on him, before being ejected from the jadeblood’s mind. That, and not the destruction the other woman was wreaking on her crew, was what had caused her panic. There were very few who could rebuff her psychic invasions. More than she would care to admit, but still very few. But the jadeblood’s mind was such an impenetrable wall of anger and fury that the cacophony of it, the sheer rageful noise of it, had ejected her with a finality. To invade her mind one more time would kill one of them, and Aranea wasn’t sure which one of them it would be.

For her part, the psychic probe had caused a twinge in The Dolorosa's head, a migraine that made the spasms in her left arm worse. But she kept going, dashing through the dark hallways of the ship, casting the crew from her as they tried to subdue her. From the hold, she had heard the boarding pirate and the fight above deck. It had seemed a good time to attempt an escape. She had hoped to slip away in the confusion, or at the very least succeed in throwing herself overboard. She wanted the waves would burn away her body. Tired as she was, she'd strained against the iron shackles bolting her to the wall. She knew that soon she wouldn't have the energy or the will power to attempt an escape, so it had to be now. Her shoulders heaved, and her chitin had creaked with the strain of it. She had seen the way her son's shoulders had rolled as he to had strained against his bonds. She'd sobbed once at the thought of it, and had wrenched herself forwards, and at last pulled the metal chains free from the wood, first her right arm, and then with a greater struggle her ruined left.

Theres was moonlight ahead, filtering down through a hatch. She could hear the two captains fighting above her.

Mindfang had turned on Dualscar, as panic began to mount. A rainbow drinker was loose on her ship, and it was his fault.

“How dare you! You knew! You knew this would happen.” She went for his eyes, a far less dignified or calculated move than she would normally have made. Dualscar recoiled, hands twitching towards his gun. For a moment a sneer crossed his face, as he tried to rally, searching for a way to play it off as a victory, before his bewilderment got the better of him.

“What are you even talking about, you filthy land dweller?”

“The jade blood! She was a trap. You horrible coward, you couldn’t even try to kill me yourself?” She readied her dice just as Dualscar readied his gun. Their crews were beginning to shout and jeer at one another, but were waiting for their Captains to start before rushing each other.

What finally set off the fight was The Dolorosa heaving herself up from below decks, leaping up through the door as it splintered around her.

“What, she’s out, how did?” Dualscar started, before the jadeblood picked up a hapless pirate and bodily threw him at the two pirate captains. Aranea managed to throw herself out of the way, but Cronus was bowled over. He speared the deck hand with Ahab’s Crosshairs to get them off himself without having to touch them.

“Get her, stop her!” Aranea shrieked at the combined crews, as the pirates fell into confusion at the sight of the howling sundropper in their midst. A few had even began to throw themselves over the edge of the ship. The ocean was a terrifying place, no doubt, but some monsters were meant to stay on land. No one wanted to be trapped onboard with the rampaging dead.

Dualscar was back on his feet, and aiming his weapon. The jadeblood saw him, and went still. The second before the blast was released from Ahab’s Crosshairs was silent.

The Dolorosa’s left side wouldn’t stop shaking, but the increased speed gifted to her in death still allowed her to dodge the beam in the millisecond between when it was released and when it hit the deck where she had just been.

Aranea had always chided Cronus for his choice of weapon on the sea. The risk of collateral damage was too high. He’d already run through several of his own ships, blasting holes in the wood and sinking himself. He’d always been fine, a seadweller merely returning to the water for a period, but Aranea had always viewed it as an uncalled for waste.

The issue suddenly escalated, as she watched water gush up through the sizable breach Cronus had just shot in her ship.

“You idiot!” Her anger at her kismesis was so great that she briefly forgot the sundropper threat, and grabbed hold of several nearby minds, sending crewmen from both ships at Dualscar, weapons readied. Dualscar shot through them as well, punching a second hole in the deck. The ship had a matter of minutes left before the water swallowed it.

Aranea howled. Damn highbloods, damn jadebloods, damn kismesis and slaves and rainbow drinkers. She ran, trying to get to the one lifeboat before her idiot crew stole or sunk it with their cowering mass.

Dualscar was still attempting to shoot The Dolorosa, herself trying to rush to the edge of the ship. The water could take her. Beneath the waves the brightness would at least be dimmed.

Giving up on long-range combat, The Orphaner snarled, and pushed through the screaming waves of pirates, throwing them out of his path. He’d kill her, point-blank range.

The Dolorosa had almost made it to water, halfway over the edge of the boat when Dualscar caught up to her. He grabbed her and yanked her away, pulling her against the muzzle of his gun. Whipping her neck around, The Dolorosa retaliated by biting into his shoulder. She’d meant to go for his jugular, but had missed. She still managed to pull away with a significant chunk of flesh in her mouth. Cronus screamed and recoiled. Briefly he looked around for his kismesis, hoping she would swoop in to save him and steal the victory. But she was already in the lifeboat, shoving crew members out of it as she controlled others into lowering the craft.

The Dolorosa slipped out of his hold, and he didn’t try to catch her again, instead rushing towards the lifeboat and his kismesis. The Dolorosa again climbed over the railing, the splintery wood crumbling into the pads of her fingers, a few slivers cutting even through the callouses. The water was dark, refusing even to mirror the light of the two moons. She jumped.

Aranea had managed to get the boat safely into the water, and the crewmen she’d let onboard were trying to row it out further from the rest of the ship, and the expanse of hands rising out of the water trying to save themselves in the lifeboat, threatening to make the tiny vessel capsize. She spotted the wave of of The Orphaner’s horns just above the water as he swam towards her, before he dived to avoid the flailing limbs of the drowning pirates. The water was churning, and he was bleeding; he likely wanted to be let aboard to avoid the mass of lusuum and wild beasts that would soon converge on the scene. Grudgingly, she offered him a hand. She was already down a ship, better not to lose her kismesis as well. In any case, he wouldn’t be able to spread word of what had just happened without looking bad himself. The two sat in silence as the midbloods rowed. Neither of them saw The Dolorosa hit the water.

\----

The Dolorosa had never learned how to swim. Water was the realm of highbloods and hungrier things. It hadn’t even occurred to her to take a breath before she fell beneath the waves. Instead, she let her own dead weight sink, thinking that was at least better than what had been above. And the water was mercifully dark. She sank and sank, arms outstretched above her head, fingers splayed wide in the currents. Looking down, she could see no bottom, only a progressive darkness. Darker even than the brooding caverns.

It was good that she was dead. Her lungs didn’t need air. It was good that she was dead, until she realized that it wasn’t. The past weeks she had wondered, hoped, that she could die a double-death. A real, sleeping end. Now the prospect of finality, a real cessation was terrifying, but even more so was the prospect of an unending undeath. Would her body sink forever? Was there something past the ocean waters, or did they go on forever, into deeper darkness, and whatever there was beyond that. Maybe the salt would turn into sugar, would turn into honey, and then at least she’d be past the point of comprehension once it flowed into her mouth.

The pain in her joints increased as she continued to fall. The Dolorosa thought she was collapsing in on herself, and that was how it would end for her. That her joints, already so worn from running and begging and fighting would at last buckle, bringing the rest of her inwards and circular into a small, burning mass as well. A black hole of a person, carried along in the ocean currents. But the pain passed, she did not collapse, and she settled herself.

Endless hours, and the darkness became too much, so she phosphoresced. Her own light was not too bright. There was something foggy and distant below her, too distorted to tell what it was, but it looked solid. She was fearful, at first, of the great mass rising out of the depths to meet her, but her fear too slipped away.

Once before another great mass had rushed up to meet her. She still remembered even the individual grains of the desert sand that first time she had fallen in the dunes. She had already died before, wandering the desert; her son bundled in her arms, searching for water in the sunlight while trying to avoid Imperial guards. Even then she had been hunted, before her son had even learned to speak. Then it was for the crime of leaving the brooding caverns. Jadebloods were not allowed to abandon their holy duty. But she had, and the desert itself had killed her for her sins.

At last, she collapsed against the sands of the sea floor. She lay there for a while, curled up on the seabed, glowing softly in the darkness. There were other lights, like hers, out there in the darkness. She wondered if it was other versions of herself also nesting in the silt and the darkness.

It was warmer on the seabed than she would have thought. She slept, or died again, and the lights had moved when she opened her eyes again. It made her dizzy, and she wanted to leave. So she did.

Straining against the weight of everything, she heaved herself to her feet, the weight nestled between her shoulders. There was no direction, except perhaps up, and she could not go there, so she started walking along the seafloor, each step laborious. She kicked up sand and small wiggling things as she moved. She passed volcanic vents, teeming with coiling skittering beasts, and wandered into the cold beyond them. Between high arches of the mammoth bones of sunken sea creatures, she walked, and among the sloping, domed ruins of long sunken cities. All these things were dim and inconsequential to The Dolorosa.

  
There were whispers in the dark waters. The Dolorosa brushed them off as a symptom of the damage the psychic control had caused to her brain, nothing more, and glowed slightly brighter until they passed. The seabed was much like the desert, and she had already once made it through that. The difference now was that the comforting weight of her son was replaced by the gaping absence of him, compounded by the sheer tonnage of all the waters of the world.

Step after step carried her forward, traveling by her own emitted light in the dark, until another light outshone her. She could see the moons through the waters, so far above her yet creeping closer. Porrim came upon the shore, emerging from the sea foam, water cascading off of her, but not weeping.

Her son was dead. The Psiionic was bolted into a ship stars and stars away from her. As she was being slapped in chains and dragged away to market, she had seen the Condesce’s lackeys already moving to kill The Disciple. She was bereft of all that she had once had. She could not even return to the desert; the heat of the caves and the humming and thrushing of the Mother Grubs were forever closed off from her.

So Porrim wandered alone, feet grown calloused and a tremor in her left side. Eventually she found a desert, much like the one she had emerged into, much like the one she had died and been reborn in. The rocks were wrong from what she remembered and wanted, towering giants of basalt columns, rather than the kneeling red monoliths of home. It saddened her, but all that mattered was that she found a place to hide and sleep. There were caves in the columns, wind whistling through some of them. She found one that was silent, with only one entrance that twisted deep into the rocks. She entered, and did not emerge again for a long while.


	2. Chapter 2

Latula Pyrope was not yet high enough on the legislacerator ladder that she could blow off bullshit cases. And this was a bullshit case. Sundroppers eating idiot highbloods was hardly a case. No motive, no patterns, just pure animal hunger. It would have made more sense to put an extermassasinator on the job, not a woman of the law. She’d check at least; there were enough small incongruities that maybe (maybe) there was something further there. At most a rainbow drinker with some higher faculties left, rather than a mere shambling sundropper.

The incongruities so far: Sundroppers were hungry, unthinking things. But the bodies had been discovered with only minimal mauling. A much more reserved consumption, merciful even, faces and eyes left intact. Perhaps something had scared the Sundropper off mid-feeding, but the chances of that happening in every instance were low.

As Redglare made her way deeper into the basalt desert she encountered some of the nomads who wandered there, and the incongruities increased. Her teal blood was just warm enough for the skittish olive and yellow blood caravans to open up to her. Not much, but enough. They told her of their fears of the hungry things walking the daylight, but also their subdued relief at the death of the highbloods. They had feared more the indigo blood who’d killed two of their day-watchers while everyone else had slept, or the cerulean blood who had had run down the youngest nomad’s lusus for sport than any skittering dead.

To Redglare it began to look like some sort of justice. Not the justice on the books, certainly, but someone’s justice. And Sundroppers didn’t deal in justice.

The case had evolved. The something stalking the daylight had become a someone patrolling out in the sun.

There were caves up in the high rocks, dark spots glowering in the towering stone. Redglare watched them as she passed beneath them, wary of hungry beasts or hungrier trolls. It was worth searching them, although they were so numerous it seemed futile. Redglare didn’t want to spend the rest of her legal career spelunking.

She had experience with finding rogue trolls in caves. Or near experience. She hadn’t actually met the painter in the sandstone caverns, but she had read their messages. The story of a band of heretical prophets, and a symbol repeating over and over, the burning shackles reserved for the Empire’s worst traitors. The paintings had been moving, even persuasive. Redglare now wore the symbol on a chain around her neck; she had hoped to one day meet the painter and question them further about gaps in the story, but she would have faith in the mean time. Perhaps she would get lucky with finding knowledge in a cave again.

She searched numerous caves and various holes, spending two lunar cycles alone out in the stone desert. The murders had stopped, so Latula hypothesized she was close enough to make her quarry nervous. The insides of so many caves began to look the same to her, but at last she found one with marked differences. There were signs of habitation. Nothing, she mused, like the painted caverns of whatever disciple she had found, but small, telltale signs. Stone worn smooth by many footsteps, small discarded food remnants by the cave mouth. Briefly, Latula hoped she would find that elusive transcriber, and answers to her questions, but as she crept forward into the rock, she found the walls of the cave cold and unadorned. Someone was here, but not the painter.

Redglare peered about in the dark as she inched forwards. Trolls normally traversed the night with the help of the dual moons, whose light didn't make it this far back into the basalt, but even in the dark of the cave Latula could still make out dim shapes. Mostly stone, columns and crouching boulders. And, near the finite back of the cave, a heap of rags piled against the wall, moth eaten and full of holes. Latula approached to investigate, realizing too late that the rags covered a person. The room flooded with light, burning at Redglare’s eyes as the Sundropper raised herself to her full, impressive, looming height, all the while bioluminescing.

Redglare felt fear. Squinting against the light, she could see the black of the dead woman’s gums as her lips pulled up in a snarl, vivid against the gleam of her fangs and skin. Latula backed away, hoping her eyes would readjust before the Sundropper attacked. As she scrambled backwards, she readied her cane sword, pulling all but the very tip of it free in warning. Her hidden necklace was also shaken free, a sigil about her throat.

At the sight of the irons, glinting in her own light, the Dolorosa stopped, a snarl dying in her throat. She had seen the burning image in her dreams for years, but hadn’t thought she would have to face it in the darkness of her cave. Her limbs began to tremble; the tremors hadn’t stopped since her escape from the pirate ship but they hadn’t been this bad in years.

She groaned with the pain of it, and the sound of her own voice caused her to break down, weeping in loud, shrieking sobs. Redglare kept her guard up, sword nearly out of its sheath, but not quite. Fearing a trick from the rainbow drinker, she nevertheless re-sheathed her weapon, and held out the pendant like a holy sign.

“Does this mean something to you?” Perhaps the rainbow drinker had escaped the irons herself, a somewhat unlikely punishment for a renegade jade blood, but not outside the realm of the possibility. The case had evolved, but the weeping defendant was wholly pitiable. Latula would at least hear her testimony, if she wanted to be heard.

Porrim nodded, and began to explain everything to the stranger bearing the sign of her son’s death, her voice shaking with pain and pride.

“He was my son, I found him on my own. I carried him in my own arms, on my own back, as I wandered and died in the desert, and I picked him up again after I awoke once more in the sunlight. I had loved and coveted that light, that burning thing for so long, and then I became it.”


End file.
